2022 Early Hearing Detection & Intervention Virtual Conference
March 13 - 15, 2022
8/23/2017 | 3:00 PM - 5:30 PM | Wild Horse Demography: Implications for Sustainable Management Within Economic Constraints | Salon F
Wild Horse Demography: Implications for Sustainable Management Within Economic Constraints
A fundamental ecological metric crucial to the management of wild horses on public lands in the western United States is the realized growth rates of free-ranging populations. Several independent panels of scientists have reviewed both published studies and management data and have concluded that wild horse populations typically increase by 15-20% annually. Resource limitation is the only means of natural regulation of horse numbers as there is little evidence of significant predation in most horse herds. When forage and water are inadequate for the number of horses on the range animals die a slow death due to starvation and dehydration and during periods of drought large numbers of animals may die. The public demands intervention by management agencies to minimize horse deaths on rangelands due to resource limitation and the BLM is obligated to manage horse numbers to maintain a ‘thriving ecological balance’. Active management of wild horse numbers has occurred through capture and removal from the range, however, this management has become unsustainable due to the expense of maintaining increasingly large numbers of unwanted animals in captivity. BLM’s wild horse management program is now at a critical crossroad as budget constraints have hampered the ability of the agency to manage the more than 100,000 free-ranging and captive horses that exist today. If the current course of minimal management of horse numbers continues public rangelands will become severely degraded, large numbers of horses will suffer, native wildlife will decline, and all public uses of these rangelands will be negatively impacted. The tools exist to craft a new policy for wild horse management that can be sustainable and maintain thriving and healthy wild horse populations. Developing and implementing an effective policy, however, will involve hard choices and require cooperation and compromise by all stakeholders.
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Presenters/Authors
Robert Garrott
(), Montana State University, rgarrott@montana.edu;
Robert Garrott is a professor in the Ecology Department at Montana State University and is Director of the department's Fish and Wildlife Ecology and Management Program. The focus of his research is understanding the abiotic and biotic ecological processes that influence mammalian populations and communities. He has been involved in wild horse research and management for approximately 30 years and served on the most recent National Research Council scientific panel that reviewed BLM's Wild Horse and Burro Program.
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Madan Kumar Oli
(), University of Florida, olim@ufl.edu;
Madan Oli is a professor in the Department of Wildlife Ecology at the University of Florida. His research interests include population ecology, theory and the application of matrix population models, and the conservation and management of wildlife populations. He served on the most recent National Research Council scientific panel that reviewed BLM's Wild Horse and Burro Program.
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